Future goals: Rollerderby enthusiast?
My 10-year high school reunion is this month, I think. This month or next … either way I am old as dirt.
I sent a Facebook message to the person coordinating the shindig informing them I wouldn’t make it. I live 2,500 miles away. Truth is even if I lived 2.5 miles from the reunion’s location I would not attend. I have no interest in reliving high school.
I received a reply with a series of questions – spouse’s name, number of children, future goals, and favorite high school memory – for a “memories book.”
So, about those questions …
Spouse’s name
Isn’t this presumptive? I mean, I am willing to bet 90 percent of my graduating class are married or shacked up – many married years ago – but shouldn’t the first question be relationship status? We’re all 27 or 28, but that doesn’t mean everyone is on the same bayou Catholic timetable. Maybe “spouse’s name” is a standard question. It is my first reunion, after all. But, the request strikes me as an example of how backwoods my high school is/was – that someone would assume you need to be married at age 27.
Number of children
The only thing my high school classmates did faster than get married was have babies. By contrast, the only thing I was less interested in than marriage in my early 20′s was having children. Bastards, Jesus-approved children, demon spawn, clones, etc. Didn’t matter. Didn’t want kids in my early 20′s, or right now for that matter. And I don’t care about hearing stories about my former classmates’ kids or seeing their pictures. Especially when I already see those pictures in my Facebook news feed every day.
Future goals
Whatever I achieve in the future will not be because of anything I learned in high school. High school taught me to be apathetic and to avoid standing out, for fear others would ridicule me. Fortunately, the outside world is more accepting of individuality.
Favorite high school memory
I remember my high school as a cesspool where culture went to die. It was surrounded by sugarcane fields in a parish poor economically and intellectually. My senior English teacher, Chris “Grem” Gremillion, read the parish weekly newspaper each Thursday and pointed out the mistakes one by one. He took glee in making inappropriate jokes about sex and celebrity deaths. That’s some filth, he always said. He also talked incessantly about Cyndi Lauper, men moisturizing their faces, and sneaking into movies. My favorite Grem moment: Him faking a seizure on his desk to illustrate how he avoided being robbed in New Orleans. Totally inappropriate, yet totally amazing. <3!
